Buoyant Bus Joins Boat Parade Entries

It takes a lot of work to put a bus in a parade, especially when the parade is on water.

Rob Kornahrens and his crew of relatives and close friends have done it before, and tonight they're hoping to prove they've done it again.

The bus barge is one of about 100 vessels, from kayaks and canoes to yachts, taking part in tonight's BellSouth Winterfest Boat Parade presented by Nokia.

The parade gets under way at 6:30 p.m. starting at Port Everglades. About 800,000 spectators are expected to watch the decked-out boats as they travel along the Intracoastal Waterway, past the open drawbridges and up to Lake Santa Barbara in Pompano Beach.

Then again on Sunday night, the bus barge will join the Pompano Beach Holiday Boat Parade, which begins at 6:30 p.m. at Lake Santa Barbara.

Kornahrens bought the bus barge from Broward County Transit four years ago. It's an actual retired bus, mounted on a pontoon with its steering wheel connected to the rudders so the captain can steer like someone navigating busy city streets. They dress it up differently every year for the parade.

This year, it will be a pirate ship.

The bus barge was docked Friday morning on the Intracoastal Waterway behind Kornahrens' home in Lighthouse Point. Seven days ago, it barely looked like a boat, draped in black with wooden planks along the top to begin its transformation.

"We worked on it for about a month, getting it into shape," said Ron Gunvaldsen, Kornahrens' brother-in-law.

Planning actually started more than two months before the parade. Kornahrens invites friends and family to his home in early October to plan a theme.

"One year we dressed it up as a yellow submarine," said Deborah Kornahrens, Rob's wife. Two years ago, it was Santa's sleigh, complete with wooden reindeer along the top of the bus.

Last year, Habitat for Humanity fashioned the bus barge as a half-finished house.

With just a week to go before the big parade, a crane arrived to load three generators onto the bus barge. The generators put out 22,000 kilowatts of power.

Sails arrived a week ago, and the barge slowly but surely took shape over the past seven days.

Kornahrens and his family have been a part of the parade for 10 years, using and abusing their commercial fishing boats along the way before buying the bus.

"We've thought of stopping, because it takes so much work, but people really seem to enjoy it, and we're going to keep doing it," Deborah Kornahrens said.

Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4207.